Posted on 12/14/2017 10:37:10 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
The past two months of electoral losses for the Trump GOP feel very familiar.
Newly elected president Barack Obama’s party lost off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and suffered a stunning upset in a Senate race it had no business losing, in Massachusetts. Trump’s party lost off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and suffered a stunning upset in a Senate race it had no business losing, in Alabama.
We don’t know if Trump will experience a midterm shellacking on par with Obama’s in 2010, or, getting more speculative, go on to win reelection anyway. But every indication is that Obama and Trump are similar in that their modes of operating work much better for them than their parties.
Both pioneered a different way of doing presidential politics, and built a new coalition for victory. But no one could replicate Obama’s model, and so far, no one has shown any signs of successfully adapting to, let alone copying, Trump’s.
Other Democrats didn’t have Obama’s personal magnetism, or ability to present garden-variety liberal positions as a middle way born of excruciating thoughtfulness. They weren’t bonded to the base, and capable of turning it out in record numbers. They weren’t running elections nationwide where the so-called coalition of the ascendant could truly make its electoral presence felt.
As a result, the only Democrat left standing after the Obama years was Obama himself. Trump could be creating a similar dynamic.
His behavior is designed to make the other side fear and hate him as much as possible. The president finds this entertaining, and it has the added advantage of convincing his voters that, whatever his other flaws, Trump has “the right enemies.”
The problem is that all the people stirred up into a lather of anti-Trump loathing might want to do something with all their pent-up energy — like vote. With Trump nowhere near a ballot for the next three years, the only alternative is to take it out on the nearest person with an “R” next to his name
Ed Gillespie ran away from Trump and lost in Virginia. Roy Moore ran toward Trump (with a lot of excess baggage) and lost in Alabama. One was a wonky establishment Republican careful to sand away any hard edges in his political persona; the other was an obstreperous and ignorant insurgent Republican who prided himself on his outrageousness. It didn’t matter.
They both were defeated the same way, holding their own Republican voters, but getting overwhelmed by a tide of millennials, suburbanites, and minorities motivated by their abiding animus toward Trump.
The backlash that conventional wisdom thought Trump would create among these voters in 2016, to his own detriment, is coming about in 2017, to the detriment of his fellow Republicans. They can’t rely on the circumstances or the personal qualities that helped Trump get over the top last year.
They don’t have the luxury of losing the popular vote and still winning elections. They don’t have the advantage of running against a historically bad candidate in Hillary Clinton. They don’t have Trump’s star power, brazen self-confidence, knack for diminishing opponents, innate sense for culture war politics, and dominance of and understanding of the media.
This gets to the idiocy of Steve Bannon’s project to try to run Trump-like insurgents everywhere. Bannon is trying to recapture the magic of 2016, without the one indispensable ingredient — Trump himself.
Trump, too, labors under an unrealistic view of the meaning of 2016. Just because he won the presidency when he had an approval rating in the 30s, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to stay in the 30s. In the Alabama exit polls, Trump’s approval rating was 48 percent; if it had been 51 percent, it might have been enough for Moore to win.
With the right opponent and the right conditions in 2020, Trump may be able to win reelection — after his party gets decimated underneath him. We’ve seen this movie before.
Check the results of Moore's previous campaigns in AL. If he were as popular as we were led to believe, he would have survived the media onslaught. (In fact, he almost did anyway -- the election was razor-close.)
But Moore never was a darling of AL; he certainly did not start his senatorial campaign with anything near the +28% margin that Trump garnered in AL last year.
As far as the media campaign, yes, Moore would have won handily without that. And now we can expect that next year, in the mid-term elections, in any race that is anywhere near close, every single Republican candidate will, a few weeks prior to the election, be facing three or four women (and/or men who were just boys years ago) claiming inappropriateness, harassment, or sexual assault. Credit Mitch McConnell for that.
Cand David French survive David French?
Give me a break. Moore won the primary fair and square.
For the love of God, look at the financials of both parties. Donors give to those in power, The Republicans are flush.
So much wishful thinking in that post.
Heller is almost certainly a goner running in a blue state with a motivated Dem base.
The DNC doesn’t need money because the Dems will have unlimited funds from their billionaire donors. They like to run dark money ops through outside orgs.
Any MAGA Republicans who win primaries like Kelli Ward will be attacked as unelectable just as Moore was by the GOPe. K Street won’t donate to them and they will be massively outspent by billionaire backed Dems. Guaranteed.
I wish it wsan’t the case but it it was it is. The GOPe have a track record and ignoring that won’t change a thing. The GOPe nave no interest in MAGA and have shown they prefer progressive Democrats to MAGA. Sorry.
Did She date and molest underage girls as well
Back away from the edge. It will all be OK.
If Trump can win, anyone can!
Did She date and molest underage girls as well
Back away from the edge. It will all be OK.
If Trump can win, anyone can!
No, she’s “Crazy” Kelli Ward and “has no chance of winning.” The progressive corportist GOPe won’t be supporting a MAGA Republican like her. Guaranteed. Dream on if you wish but that is a fact.
The Democrats are hoping that former governor Bredesen will run for Corker's seat in Tennessee. Whether he would be able to beat the Republican (perhaps Marsha Blackburn) is another matter. Is Tennessee one of the "possible pickups"?
Linked on drudge right now. Alabama is the template for the GOPe going forward and most certainly not a one off:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/15/politics/next-alabama-states/index.html
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